


Across the Void

by libraryseraph



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Horrorterrors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraryseraph/pseuds/libraryseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose summons a horrorterror, and doesn't exactly get what she expected</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across the Void

**Author's Note:**

  * For [insecureAuthor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/insecureAuthor/gifts).



Rose knelt on the floor of her room, putting the final touches on her summoning circle. The ritual was almost complete, and she looked around her room with satisfaction. It was dim, illuminated by the light of a few flickering candles, and she had managed to shove most of her piles of clothes and books into the shadows to keep them from ruining her aesthetic. This was it. She was finally ready. No more candles setting of the smoke alarm, no more cats walking into the circle, this was it. She leant forward, and placed her hands on the edge of the circle.   
“Oh the nobles beyond the barrier. Your servants invoke you.”  
She placed a candle at one edge of the circle.   
“Your servants beseech you. Send us an emissary, we beg you.”  
She placed a second candle, directly across the circle from the first.  
“In thiss circle, marked with the symbols of the ancient contract, I open the door.”  
She turned away from the circle, counted to 10 silently, and clapped her hands.  
The temperature dropped abruptly, and the air became damp and salty. The shadows danced along the wall, but Rose couldn’t tell whether or not it was just the flickering of the candles. Something giggled. Rose stood completely still, refusing to turn around. An icy cold tendril touched the back of her neck, and moved up and around towards her cheek, almost caressing her. Rose bit back a scream.  
“You can turn around now, sealy” It was a girl’s voice, high-pitched and a bit breathy, slightly echoing, but otherwise normal. Rose turned around. There was a thing, standing in the centre of the summoning circle, with wet gray skin like a seal’s, lined with pink bioluminescent pits. Heavy black hair that moved like tentacles- or maybe it was tentacles- fell down to the floor around its round body.   
“Cme on. Didn’t your brooder ever teach you it’s rude to stare?” It- she lifted a lock of hair out of her face, revealing round pink eyes and a pair of slit nostrils.  
“Do you efin have brooders in this ring?”   
Rose realized her mouth was hanging open. “Br-brooders?” Great, Rose. First contact with a horrorterror, and you stand there blabbering like you expected a first guardian.   
“You know. They raise you and stuff.” The girl in the circle tilted her head. “Oh cod. Are you a first-timer?”   
Rose nodded. “Are you even a horrorterror? You don’t seen very… horribleterrible.”  
“How rude! Of course I’m a horrorterror. I’m not used to extruding into this ring, that’s all.”   
Rose sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re just, not what I was expecting.”   
“Whale, I was trying to look more like you, so it wouldn’t scare you too much. I kept the tentacles, though. Have to stick to tradition sometimes. I’m Feferi.”   
Rose shrugged. “I’m Rose. What do you want to do now?”  
“I want you to tell me things!” Feferi clasped her hands under her chin. “I’ve never been anywhere but the furthest ring, and his ring is so weird. It’s all boxes, and everything just gets pulled down in one direction.”   
“…what do you want to know?” Rose was pretty sure this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to get some sort of horrible monster and ask it questions about the unknowable voids beyond the world, and now she was going to spend her entire afternoon explaining microwaves to an alien.   
“Tell me about yourshellf! What do you do when you aren’t summoning things?” Feferi squatted down inside the summoning circle, hugging her knees to her chest in a surprisingly human gesture.   
“Well, this is my house,” Rose started. “I live here. But really, the mundaneity of m life couldn’t possibly compare with the glories of the void.” She was getting her stride back now. “This is my inner sanctum, quite possibly my only freedom from to slings and arrows of the world.”  
“Like what?” Feferi had pulled a discarded sock from somewhere and was investigating it, turning it over in her hands and tentacles. “Void pirates? Entropy singers? Bears? they do have bears in this ring, don’t they?”   
“Um, no. I was referring to more metaphorical hazards.” Hazards like the kids at school, with their snide remarks about her clothes, the way she talked, her mother. Hazards like the bored teachers who told her to “make friends” with her bullies, as if that would fix anything. Once, she had asked her English teacher if he wanted to be friends with someone who called his mother an alcoholic slut. He never tried to talk to her again.   
“I think maybe I understand.”   
Rose’s head snapped up. “But you’re a horrorterror. How could you possibly understand?”  
“How rude! It’s not like I’m some sort of unknowable monster from beyond everything. Whale, I mean I am, but I have problems too.”   
Feferi’s voice switched to a deep growl, like multiple voices speaking at once “’Feferi, you’ll never amount to anything if you can’t conceptualize in more rings. Feferi, it’s about time you started thinking about what you want to do with your perceivable existence. Feferi, you need to interface with your temporal spawnmates more.” Her voice switched back to its strange bubbly tones. “You know?”  
Rose pushed her jaw back into place. “…I guess some things are the same no matter where you are.”   
In a bizarre way, the familiarity was what confused her the most. She had expected omething horrible and unknowable, and in a way, that would have been more comforting. The normalicy of Feferi was what was bizarre.   
“Hey! Water you thinking about? I’m still here.” Feferi folded her arms across her chest sulkily.   
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about how… human you seem. It’s strange.”   
Feferi burst out laughing “You think this is strange? But is was trying to be normal for you! I didn’t want to scare you!”   
Rose smiled. “And that was very nice of you. I certainly didn’t expect such consideration from an eldritch being from beyond the veil. I it isn’t too much to ask, could I please see more?”  
Feferi clapped her hands to her cheeks, like an excited child. “You reelly want to see me? Wow, I’m so excited!” her razor-toothed smile widened, far beyond her cheeks. “Don’t be afraid. It’s still just me.”  
She took Rose’s hand, her hand was small and firm, like damp rubber or whaleskin. Rose wasn’t sure how to describe it. It wasn’t like Feferi was changing shape. It was more like seeing something from an angle, and going around to see it was much larger than she’d ever seen, or seeing something from a distance and having it come closer and seeing more and more detail. Feferi’s fractal tentacles braided around her arm. Her humanoid outline was breaking down more and more as tentacles branched out from each point of her body, swirling together like the arms of a galaxy. Magenta eyes, shining like stars, protruded from everywhere, and she was singing. The sound of Feferi’s voice resounded through her bones, and Rose began to hum along poorly to it. She wasn’t even sure where she was anymore, she could’t see her bedroom anymore, just an endless rippled sea of… something. There were things in the something, and she tried to focus on them, when a dark tentacle wrapped around her eyes. “Don’t look at them.   
Not yet. You can only see this because I’m deciding how you see it. You can’t look too closely.   
Suddenly, there was a floor under Rose’s feet, and a hand over her eyes instead of tentacles.   
“I’m shorey. I know you wanted to sea more. Most of them are a lot more impressive than me, anyways.”   
Rose pried the hand off her eyes, and whirled around to face Feferi. She looked more human again, but now Rose could, in a way, see how her other form was compressed and twisted down.   
“Don’t be ridiculous. Seeing that… it was more than I ever dreamed. I never expected it to be so beautiful.” Rose took Feferi’s hand, and Feferi held her hand back, her fingers bending in ways they shouldn’t quite. “I think… I think, maybe I was looking for the wrong thing in the furthest ring. Maybe I wanted a place it would make sense for me to not fit in. but instead, I found someone I actually do fit with.”   
Feferi laughed, and Rose could hear the sound of the void’s song in it. “I know. I always thought humans would be small and simple, but you reelly sea things.” She smiled her too-wide, razor-toothed smile again. “Whale, you know I’m always a summon away.”

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: Rose summons a horrorterror, or at least she tries to. But ones kid shows up instead.  
> You can take this in all kinds of different directions, demon Feferi trying to make a Faustian deal, alien Feferi being summoned and just as confused as Rose is, Feferi as being a barely contained eldritch horror...... Genre can be anything you want, dear author or artist.  
> I'd like for there to be some emphasis placed on how inhuman Feferi is, all the uncanny valley stuff, but that's not entirely necessary.


End file.
